The reasons for this blog: 1. To provide basic author information for students, teachers, librarians, etc. (Please see sidebar) 2. I think out loud a lot as I work through writing projects, and I'm trying to dump most of those thoughts here rather than on my friends.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Got some decent progress made on the dead body chapter, which I believe is 6 or so. (I may end up splitting chapter 4 in two, so I don't know how the chapter numbers will come out.)

Now it's getting late and I'm too tired to pull any more prose together, so I'm thinking about the entire story, and I'm going to see if I can start to make a vague outline of what needs to happen from Part Two on. Most of the old version is going to be cannibalized or cut, because I'll have to rethink every single scene and chapter. It was divided and set up by what happened, and I tacked the emotional story here and there where I thought it might fit. Now I need to take the wispy vague skeleton of what happened and pin it to the emotional story, lopping and tailoring and adding on where needed. Not all tonight, of course. It will take the entire process of writing and rewriting. But I'd like to see if I can even start to think in that direction. I can tell that it's going to inform these previous scenes, the new ones I've done over the past weeks; the more I understand about the later emotional arc, the better I can make these early scenes now.

I don't outline per se, but I use outlines during revision to help me keep the big picture in mind. My outlines are usually just a numbered list with one or two words to remind me what the scene or chapter has in it. Sometimes if I'm stuck or confused, listing scenes helps me see where I need to be heading next. It can provide traction, sometimes.

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